Information and pictures below are from Brent Coleman and his website, used with permission. He was a great help in helping me get this cache placed. For More information on the Gulf Ordnance Plant, you can visit the website, located here: Gulf Ordnance Website
At the end of 1941, America was at war with Germany and Japan. All the men who were able were either in the service or soon going to be. The big news on the local home front, however, was that a huge munitions plant would be built at the small town of Prairie, in Monroe County, just Southwest of Aberdeen. The plant, which would be contracted to Procter & Gamble, would primarily hire women to load and pack shells. This was indeed good news in the Tombigbee River area which had not fully recovered from the Great Depression. It was startling news for women; for many it meant they would be able to hold a job making excellent wages for the first time in their lives. Working at the new Gulf Ordnance Plant would not only be socially acceptable for women, it would be considered a patriotic duty to do so.
When the plant closed, it left thousands of men and women with work skills that they were able to use in obtaining employment in the private sector; an advantage they never would have had without the Gulf Ordnance Plant. The plant poured countless millions of dollars into the economy of Northeast Mississippi and was the catalyst that broke the back of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Estimates of the workers at the plant at any one time ranged from 6,000 to 10,000. In a few years of its existence, the huge plant would touch and change the lives of almost every person then living in the Tombigbee River area of Mississippi and Alabama.
THE RUINS
All that's left of the plant is ruins. You will see a few of these ruins on the way to the cache.
The first one you will probably notice is the white water tower near the highway. Water to supply the huge plant was a necessity, and, by luck, it was discovered that a 500,000 gallon water tank had been loaded at the Port of New Orleans to be sent to the Far East, the Dutch Indies, when the war broke out in the South Pacific. The tank was requisitioned for the GOP and today it still stands at the site, one of the few bits of physical evidence left of the huge munitions plant.
The large brick chimney on the site was part of the powerplant at the site, which basically operated as it's own city. The powerplant used 50 tons of coal a day to power the plant.
The three-story building that you will see is where liquid TNT was cooked and poured into warheads.
The "bunkers" you may notice on the way to the cache site are actually safety areas, where workers would congregate in the event of an accident.
Very near the cache site, you will notice part of the tunnel system that linked the whole plant. Everything was indoors. These tunnels were used to ferry materials throughout the plant using handcarts and chain conveyors.
Past the cable crossing the road at the parking coordinates lies the shipping dock. This dock could accommodate up to 24 trucks at a time. Some more of the tunnel system is still intact there.
